Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: January 1987 Volume 25 Number 1, Pages 3–8

Making Sure Our Past has a Future

Nancy Kolb

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I don't know how any of you got interested in history. I have a feeling there are probably interesting stories for each of you.

Personally, I did not get interested in history because of the way it was taught in the public school system in Pennsylvania. My history teacher in high school was the football coach. How many of you had the football coach as a history teacher in high school? If any of you is a football coach and a history teacher, I apologize, but in my case it really "turned me off". He was only three pages ahead of us -- and some of us were clever enough to be a chapter ahead of him! So we really didn't get much of an appreciation of history. In fact, we never made it past the Civil War; I don't think that class ever got past the Civil War. I thought American history stopped in 1865.

With this introduction to history, in college I was a biology major -- for two and a half years -- but having an inspired teacher in a course on the French Revolution got me into European history. I was graduated from college qualified to teach biology, science, and chemistry. So what did I end up teaching? Pennsylvania history.

Remember the teacher that was just three pages ahead of the students? You should have seen me that first year when I was trying to teach Pennsylvania history. But I was suddenly aware of the wonderful world of local history!

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I think that too often with our young people -- and too often with ourselves -- we get involved in "global concepts", when the best way to teach history, the best way to learn history, is at the local level in the local community. I get very frustrated when creative curriculum people in the public education system decide to teach -- as they did with my children -- Norwegian culture in the first grade. The children don't even know where their township is, much less comprehend where Norway is. I think it's time we get back to the grass roots.

One such "grass roots" program started in Chester County in the middle 1970s with Project 1776. It was actually the outgrowth of a program that was started here in the Strafford School by Anne Cook and Jane Breinholt. I think that kind of initiative, and that kind of effort, and its emphasis on local history, is what history is all about.

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission is one of the oldest public history agencies in the country. We were founded as an Historical Commission in 1913. The interesting thing about that is that we were founded because of the initiative of the Pennsylvania Federation of Historical Societies, which is an association of local history organizations. So really the state's historical agency came about as a result of a grass roots effort on the part of the local historical societies in the state.

We estimate that today there are more than 500 local historical societies in Pennsylvania. Sixty-five percent of all the museums and historical institutions in the United States are local history institutions. It is therefore no surprise that 65 percent of the museums in Pennsylvania have budgets of less than $50,000 a year. It is a reflection of the proliferation of small historical organizations, attempting to save old houses and to interpret their local community.

The early years of the Historical Commission revolved around the State Museum, founded before the Historical Commission was created in 1913, and the State Archives.

Another favorite program in the early years was the marker program. Unfortunately, these markers that sit out there along the highways were designed at a time when the maximum speed on any road was how fast you could get the horse to go. They are now on roads where the highway speed limit is 55 miles an hour. I don't know how many of you have ever read any of them -- I sometimes think they're more of a traffic hazard than anything else -- but they're wonderful if you pull off the road and read them. There's a lot of local history on them. We do publish a guide to the markers that has their text in it and which might make it a little safer to read them. (For those of you who are Trivial Pursuit fans, there are 1584 of them in Pennsylvania -- and they have to be painted every three years.)

From 1915 to 1945 the Commission grew very slowly, but we did start to acquire some historic sites and museums.

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In 1913 we dredged from the bottom of Misery Bay in Lake Erie the hull of the flagship "Niagara," and restored it for the first time. In 1940 were stored it for the second time. In 1986, '87, and '88 we will restore it for the third time. It is going to cost somewhere around two million dollars to restore it this time. But it will be back in Lake Erie, and operative again. (1988 is the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie, where the "Niagara" was Admiral Perry's flagship, for those of you the next time you play Trivial Pursuit. That's a wonderful thing about being in state and local history - you can fascinate your friends with all sorts of irrelevant information!)

We also, in 1939, practiced historic preservation in a slightly different way; at Pennsbury we reconstructed a building that wasn't there! It was really not until the mid-1970s that the movement to save old houses started in this country. We were interpreting and preserving history in all sorts of ways before that. Pennsbury was one of them. At the same time that the State was reconstructing Pennsbury, you can probably think of fifteen buildings - or more -- all over Pennsylvania that were being demolished at the time. They were original 17th- or 18th-century buildings, but the State was more interested at that point in building a reconstruction of Pennsbury Manor. The architect for the reconstruction, incidentally, was R. Brognard Okie, who lived in Devon here in Easttown Township. We have his papers in the State Archives. Personally, I am glad that they did the restoration, because some years later it provided me an opportunity to get into this business.

We acquired Old Economy Village, in Ambridge, northwest of Pittsburgh. It's the last home of the Harmonists, who were a communal society not unlike the Shakers. The wonderful thing about celibate communities is that when the last person dies the State is the heir. So we inherited the real estate, 85 percent of the original furnishings, and 100 percent of the 150 years of archives, and now have one of the best-documented historic sites in America. If you've never been there, it's really worth a trip.

We also acquired Ephrata Cloister, Cornwall Iron Furnace (a National Engineering Landmark), and a number of other properties. But, again, the growth was slow and gradual.

In 1945, in order to reflect a new mode of operating, the Historical Commission was renamed the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

From 1945 to 1970 we underwent a very rapid growth period -- not in budget but in the number of responsibilities. It became an unspoken goal to have a state-owned historic site or museum within 50 miles of every resident in the state of Pennsylvania. Consequently, we have anthracite coal museums; we have a railroad museum; we have a lumber museum; we have an oil museum (I've often thought we should have just two items in the gift shop -- regular and unleaded -- but unfortunately we don't have the mineral rights there); we have enough churches to hold an ecumenical council; a number of old schoolhouses; and a number of very notable houses that had no name when they came to us other than "the old stone house."

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We became real estate and land rich -- and cash poor. We have more than 550 buildings for which we are responsible, and 5,000 acres of grass that has to be mowed each summer. The last major real estate acquired by the Commission was about 15 or 20 years ago. We've actually turned some down, the Port of History Museum at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia, for example. It initially was built by the State, to be operated by the Historical and Museum Commission. I think that it was 1977 when the building was finally finished, and when they went to turn it over to the Commission we said, "No". I'd really like to have a museum in downtown Philadelphia, but not if we have to take two and a half million dollars out of what is already a sorely-strained operating budget. So the Department of General Services had it for four or five years, not knowing what to do with it, before they finally sold it to the City of Philadelphia at a bargain price, and now the Civic Center Museum operates it for the City.

In the last five years we have undergone a major reorganization to try to maximize the history program in Pennsylvania without having to have ever-growing resources. We had 60 museums or historic sites that we operate ourselves, including, incidentally, a third of an acre and the Monacacy monument in Maryland! (Every year we get a phone call either from the House or Senate Appropriations Committee or the Budget Office, asking why in the world we are mowing grass in Maryland.) These properties were an increasing drain on our resources. Many of them were closed-- not so much in eastern Pennsylvania as in the western part of the state -- simply because we were unable to provide them with staff or even minimal care.

So we've entered into what we call a "property placement" program. We have three categories of properties. The first we maintain and operate ourselves. This includes most of the properties in eastern Pennsylvania, because Pennsylvania's history started here and most of our most significant properties are here. Then we have a second group of properties, for which we have turned the management over to the local communities from whence they came. We provide sufficient funds to maintain their basic operation, such as paying the utility bills, and they do the rest. They get just enough support, and think it's terrific that they've got their properties back again. The third category are those we haven't been able to do anything with, so we're leasing them out. A good example of this is in Chambersburg. Our property there had been empty for 15 years; it is now rented out for a very nominal rental to the March of Dimes, the Heart Association, and the Cancer Society, and the public is able to get back into it again even though it's used as office space.

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With this reorganization, we have been able to plough our available resources into the 27 historic sites and museums that we still operate ourselves. Those that we have down here in southeastern Pennsylvania include the Daniel Boone Homestead, Pottsgrove Mansion, Hope Lodge, Conrad Weiser Home and Park, Pennsbury Manor, Ephrata Cloister, Brandywine Battlefield Park (the only battlefield park that commemorates a defeat of the Revolutionary army), Washington Crossing, Graeme Park, Cornwall Furnace, Morton Homestead, Governor Printz Park, Old Chester Courthouse, and the Pennsylvania Farm Museum.

We are no longer acquiring more real estate, unless it comes with an endowment. If it comes with an endowment, we might consider it. I think you'll find that many public historical agencies are in the same position that we are. In the 1970s there was a national focus on various alternatives for historic preservation, but prior to 1970 the only way for a community to get involved in preserving an historic site was to turn the building over to some sort of public agency. Since that time, with the National Register program and the investmant tax credits, there have been all kinds of private initiative for historic preservation. I certainly think these are much more viable alternatives for any historic site, rather than its being opened as a museum. To be perfectly honest, the world does not really need another historic house/museum at this point, especially in southeastern Pennsylvania. I counted them the other day: there are 70 of them in the five-county Philadelphia area. It is no wonder that so many of them are financially in trouble. That's a lot of competition, and a lot of important buildings that are going to have to look creatively at some sort of adaptive re-use rather than trying to make it as a small historic site or a small history museum.

What else do we do today? We run the National Register program. The Bureau of Historic Preservation has processed $1.6 billion of investment tax credits since 1976. We lead the nation in the number of properties processed for the National Register --and I'm proud to say we have the smallest staff working on it.

We have a full-service, one-stop history agency today. We do research and publishing, though not so much as any of us would like to do. Those of you who think I spend my time in dusty libraries doing historical research - I wish that were true. I'm waiting until I retire, and then I'll have a chance to get back to what got me into this business to begin with.

We have a grant program: a museum assistance grant program and a local history grant program. It started two years ago with a small grant program for local historical research; last year we had $900,000 in appropriations. It is available to museums, to historical societies, county governments, and to local governments, to try to get some sort of viable projects underway. We have had a very competitive selective process, and have done some wonderful projects. It is our hope that out of this will begin to come some really scholarly history publications.

We have a full program of publications, and are in the process of retooling it. We are no longer going to be a publisher of "last resort." We have for the last several years been having a very large warehouse sale, and are attempting to sell at very reduced prices a good part of our inventory.

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We want to reduce the volume of what we're holding and reinvest the money into publications that might sell. It's a radical concept to get across to some of our staff, that we're actually trying to sell some of these publications -- but we're really making great strides with them.

We are also maximizing as much as we possibly can our earned income. We have a couple of museums that we are turning into real money-makers at this time. The most popular and most heavily visited is the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum. It is a superb collection: if you are into artifacts that go down tracks and make a lot of noise and weigh 48 tons each, the Railroad Museum is really Mecca, not only for people who love trains but for anybody who has even a small affinity for them. It's in Strasburgin Lancaster County, and unfortunately it's still pretty much of a secret! It's right across the street from the United States' most successful operating tourist railroad. We get only about a third of the riders of the railroad to come across the road, but we're actively working on luring the rest. It is, incidentally, not the railroad museum of The Pennsylvania Railroad -- although a large part of the collection is from the Pennsylvania Railroad -- it's railroads in Pennsylvania in general, and it's a wonderful collection.

We have been investing a lot of money recently in things that government agencies don't usually do. We've been doing a lot of promoting, marketing, public relations, trying to get our program across. It's hard to get your name across when it's so long -- but we're at least trying to get more people aware of what we do and who we are and what kinds of / activities we're involved in. We are not just an academic history institution. We are a public history institution. We want everybody, from senior citizens to two-year olds, to come in, and somehow leave with some sort of an enjoyment of history. I don't think that history is just the practice of academic research. Although that is an extremely important part of every good history program, I think it's somehow helping people to get in touch with their past.

We have a slogan -- an advertising slogan, in fact, and we don't use it enough -- "Making Sure Our Past has a Future". And I really think that says it all. I think it's because of the help and support of people like you that Pennsylvania's past has become as well known and gotten as much attention as it has already. And I think that together we can do a great deal more to make both the nation and the world aware of the fact that Pennsylvania really is where it happened.